Read Online 14 Degrees Below Zero by Quinton Skinner - Free Book Online
Authors: Quinton Skinner
Ads: Link
puberty that in retrospect was the turning point at which life became impossibly complicated and difficult.
But that was her story—brilliant girl steers ship directly into iceberg of sex. This body she inhabited, which gave her pleasure but which also evoked too many echoes of her mother, had absorbed a single shot of semen and incubated an entirely new human life. Years of sunshine and snow she wouldn’t know—she’d become a mother too young.
Jay steered through the sluggish traffic toward work. She’d gotten a late start and was going to be tardy for her shift, which started at the end of brunch and ran through midday—terminating before the lucrative drinks-and-dinner hours. She’d learned that preserving her inner peace (such as it was) was best accomplished by avoiding paranoid speculation about being slighted and steered away from the best shifts. Of course, she suspected she was.
She gunned the engine and shot through a yellow light. A car coming from the other direction blared its horn and nearly ran into her. She had never been the best driver in the world—too many thoughts intruding, too many things to look at. She was more cautious when Ramona was in the backseat.
Ramona’s father was named Michael Carmelov, currently of Coos Bay, Oregon, living with his parents, a college dropout like Jay. Michael had come to Minnesota for college because of vague family connections that Jay had never been able to entirely sort out. They hadn’t gotten to know each other very well. Jay met Michael at a party early her sophomore year. Michael had been in premed, but his grades weren’t good enough to promise much in the way of a medical career, and it was obvious even then that he’d never have the endurance to navigate the years of sacrifice required to actually become a doctor. Jay had been a history major, earning mostly A’s. Michael was very good-looking, with wavy hair and delicate features that in repose fell into an approximation of perceptiveness and sensitivity. It was one of those accidents of genetics—the way a face could deceive without trying.
They never even became boyfriend and girlfriend. They went to a couple of all-ages indie-rock shows together at the Seventh Street Entry. They attended several parties that were indistinguishable from the one where they met. Michael wanted to have sex, so did Jay. They practiced the pull-out method, which had worked for Jay with the ten or so partners she had racked up through high school and one year of college. In fact, Jay had started to wonder about her fertility—envisioning a future when she was thirty-five and unable to bear a child. It became one of many amorphous anxieties that plagued her in those days.
It turned out she needn’t have worried. She had sex with Michael three or four times, and she got pregnant. What rankled still was that the sex wasn’t very good at all. She’d had a lover at sixteen, her second, who with a total lack of carnal training had been better in the sack than Michael. Rookie luck, she supposed. The memory of Michael made her bitter—the way he pawed at her breasts with no recognition of the subtle nerve topography there, the way he seemed not to have heard of the clitoris, the way he mounted her and heaved in a middling fashion that brought neither the satisfaction of the subtle stroke or the aggressive joy of the animal fuck.
He
was the man who had fathered her child.
The restaurant where Jay worked was on a stretch of Lyndale that featured a bike shop, a brewpub, a rug store, and two coffeehouses. Back when Jay was in high school, she used to smoke pot with her friends and walk around this neighborhood. One time they snorted some crystal meth (obtained from a connection to the rural wastes of the Iron Range) and walked miles and miles for hours and hours around Uptown and the Wedge, in widening circles until they were all the way downtown at the doors of the City Center. In the late-morning wind, Jay could taste
But that was her story—brilliant girl steers ship directly into iceberg of sex. This body she inhabited, which gave her pleasure but which also evoked too many echoes of her mother, had absorbed a single shot of semen and incubated an entirely new human life. Years of sunshine and snow she wouldn’t know—she’d become a mother too young.
Jay steered through the sluggish traffic toward work. She’d gotten a late start and was going to be tardy for her shift, which started at the end of brunch and ran through midday—terminating before the lucrative drinks-and-dinner hours. She’d learned that preserving her inner peace (such as it was) was best accomplished by avoiding paranoid speculation about being slighted and steered away from the best shifts. Of course, she suspected she was.
She gunned the engine and shot through a yellow light. A car coming from the other direction blared its horn and nearly ran into her. She had never been the best driver in the world—too many thoughts intruding, too many things to look at. She was more cautious when Ramona was in the backseat.
Ramona’s father was named Michael Carmelov, currently of Coos Bay, Oregon, living with his parents, a college dropout like Jay. Michael had come to Minnesota for college because of vague family connections that Jay had never been able to entirely sort out. They hadn’t gotten to know each other very well. Jay met Michael at a party early her sophomore year. Michael had been in premed, but his grades weren’t good enough to promise much in the way of a medical career, and it was obvious even then that he’d never have the endurance to navigate the years of sacrifice required to actually become a doctor. Jay had been a history major, earning mostly A’s. Michael was very good-looking, with wavy hair and delicate features that in repose fell into an approximation of perceptiveness and sensitivity. It was one of those accidents of genetics—the way a face could deceive without trying.
They never even became boyfriend and girlfriend. They went to a couple of all-ages indie-rock shows together at the Seventh Street Entry. They attended several parties that were indistinguishable from the one where they met. Michael wanted to have sex, so did Jay. They practiced the pull-out method, which had worked for Jay with the ten or so partners she had racked up through high school and one year of college. In fact, Jay had started to wonder about her fertility—envisioning a future when she was thirty-five and unable to bear a child. It became one of many amorphous anxieties that plagued her in those days.
It turned out she needn’t have worried. She had sex with Michael three or four times, and she got pregnant. What rankled still was that the sex wasn’t very good at all. She’d had a lover at sixteen, her second, who with a total lack of carnal training had been better in the sack than Michael. Rookie luck, she supposed. The memory of Michael made her bitter—the way he pawed at her breasts with no recognition of the subtle nerve topography there, the way he seemed not to have heard of the clitoris, the way he mounted her and heaved in a middling fashion that brought neither the satisfaction of the subtle stroke or the aggressive joy of the animal fuck.
He
was the man who had fathered her child.
The restaurant where Jay worked was on a stretch of Lyndale that featured a bike shop, a brewpub, a rug store, and two coffeehouses. Back when Jay was in high school, she used to smoke pot with her friends and walk around this neighborhood. One time they snorted some crystal meth (obtained from a connection to the rural wastes of the Iron Range) and walked miles and miles for hours and hours around Uptown and the Wedge, in widening circles until they were all the way downtown at the doors of the City Center. In the late-morning wind, Jay could taste
Similar Books
